Tecmo Koei bids to sew up the relatively underserved market for horse racing games with Champion Jockey, recreating the experience of thundering these incredible animals down race courses around the world using motion control on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.

The game also offers an RPG-style horse breeding system, online competitive racing and lots of whipping. Get under starters order for our preview

Horse racing has been a relatively forgotten sport in video gaming. There are games featuring bikes, skis, Formula One cars, go karts and numerous other things, but thoroughbred horses remain a somewhat untapped market.

Champion Jockey is the successor to the G1 racing series, which started off on the PS2, but was ported to the Wii in 2007, where it apparently sold around 100,000 copies in Europe, despite not making a particurla splash in the popular consciousness.

Champion Jockey focuses on the overall team experience of horse racing - the breeder, the owner, the trainer and the jockey. Publisher Tecmo Koei is hoping that the game will serve the thousands of eager horse racing fans across Europe with motion control racing on PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, along with RPG-style breeding and online competitive play.

Digital Spy jumped in the saddle to see if this horse is worth backing.

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Jockeying for position, crack that whip

Champion Jockey, or to give the game its full and rather unwieldy title Champion Jockey: G1 Jockey & Gallop Racer, is at heart a simulation of being a jockey, not a game where you directly control the horse. Succeeding in the game is about understanding the limitations of the animal and adapting your playing style accordingly.

You will need to use the jockey's skills and physical traits to guide the beast to the finishing line. This means managing the horse's stamina levels, not driving too hard at the beginning as it will get tired, but also using the whip during the final furlongs to taste victory.

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The game supports a variety of different control styles, ranging from the traditional controller to all the currently available motion control systems.

On the PS3 you can use one or two Move controllers to guide the horse, while the Xbox Kinect system is also fully supported, and on the Wii you can use the Wimote and Nunchuk, or the balance board. In motion control it's about imagining that your hands are actually holding the reigns, as the jockey would in real life.

You hold them up at the start of the race to prepare the horse and then gee the animal to get it going after the starter's gun. Shifting your shoulders on Kinect, or guiding the Move controllers steers the horse down the track. Icons on the screen indicate the pulsing of the horse's hooves, as it's important to align your actions with the rhythm of the gallop.

On Steeplechase races, there is also the necessity to time the jumps against a meter on the screen to maximise your elevation and the cleanest of the leap.

A radar shows the horse's mood during the race, and when the circle goes red it indicates that it's time to start whipping the horse as it is flagging. In motion control, whipping is handled with the same action as in real life - swing your hand or controller behind and strike the imaginary horse's rump.

There are also some pretty good options with the whip too, such as showing the lash to the horse rather than using it in order to remind the animal to get a move on. Just as in the real sport, it's about not hammering the horse too much, but rather getting into a rhythm that gets you over the line.

It should be noted that there is no restriction on how much you can whip in Champion Jockey, which may not overly please the animal rights lobby.

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Best of breed, and then get online

On PS3 and Xbox 360, Tecmo Koei expects the hardcore players in Champion Jockey to use the traditional controller as they will most likely be more engaged in the game's RPG-style elements of building up a stable, breeding horses and refining blood lines for competing online.

The career mode features the ability to attach horses to your stable and then train them to increase their abilities, offering the opportunity to refine and improve the traits that suit you. For example, some horses like to lead from the front, but will need to be whipped more at the end to keep them focused, while others prefer to stay off the front runner and make a late charge.

Breeding these skills is where Champion Jockey could move beyond the casual audience and really please the core fans.

There are a variety of special abilities in the game - such as Home Time Winner giving a burst of speed at the end, or Second Wind which picks the horse up when it is flagging - and these can be combined and enhanced by refining the bloodlines.

The breeding and special abilities system means that players can create an animal most suited to their own playing style, and then compete with the animal online against other players. This rather unique take on 'levelling up' in both single and multiplayer is interesting and could prove a winner with gamers.

Champion Jockey supports up to four players online in versus races, and competing against real players certainly proves more challenging than playing against AI-controlled bots.

A range of race courses are available, such as sprawling steeplechase circuits in Europe, dustbowl dirt tracks in the US and crisp flat runs in Japan. The game is not licensed, so don't expect to be lining up at Aintree for the Grand National, or enjoying the splendour of Cheltenham for the Gold Cup.

Instead, the developer has created its own versions of the most popular tracks and events. Temco Koei said that the team hopes to licence tracks in the future, but that investment will presumably depend on how well Champion Jockey performs.

Gaudy graphics, lack of betting, but still worth a punt

One seemingly glaring omission from Champion Jockey is the betting. Horse racing is a sport where placing bets is so intrinsically linked with the action so as to render the two things almost inseparable for many people.

It seems a shame that some kind of betting system could not have been included in the game, especially as it would not have needed to involve actual money. There could have been a system for other players to bet on the outcome of races online, with the chance to win credits for spending in their horse racing stable.

Tecmo Koei has said that the game is about being a jockey rather than betting, and there are various pitfalls in including such a system in a game that is partially aimed at a casual audience. But it seems a shame that some kind of betting system could not have been offered.

Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. The horses appear to have been created from representations of the animals rather than actual mappings of their dimensions. This disparity is particularly apparent in the way the horses butt against each other during races - as they crash like Road Rash bikes rather than shudder together as fleshy, muscular giants.

Still, there is a certain charm to everything, a very Japanese feel to the game. All the colours have been amped up to the max, including the lurid green of the grass and the glossy sheen of the menus. This is in no way a true-to-life recreation of horse racing, but it also has a certain charm that is hard not to appreciate.

Overall, Champion Jockey appears to have a few issues, but it also has many positive aspects too. This is horse racing amped up to the max, particularly in the slightly garish graphics, meaning the game would be more at home in the arcade than Ascot.

But the market is wide open for a good horse racing game and the fact that the last G1 title sold 100,000 units on the Wii suggests that there is demand out there.

Champion Jockey's engaging and accessible recreation of riding a horse, along with the rich system of 'levelling up' the animals for competition online could ensure that the game enters the winner's enclosure next month.

Champion Jockey will be released on September 2 for Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.